Only Part of the Story

New Hampshire publishes on a State Web site the prices charged by hospitals in the State, and President Donald Trump is working up an Executive Order that would, with some differences in breadth (including information on the prices negotiated with insurers), make the practice a nationwide one.

Price transparency is a Critical Item in controlling—bringing down—the cost of health care, but it’s only part of the story.  A measure of cost transparency would be useful, too, not only for the consumer, but for governments as they look for (non-subsidy, non-tax) ways to further price competition.

Most costs are legitimately proprietary, especially in the competitive market environment that’s optimal for constraining prices.  One cost, though, would be useful: how much of the price charged through insurance to a consumer goes to covering the cost to the hospital of treating an uninsured consumer—both the voluntarily cash-paying consumer and the consumer who can’t otherwise afford the prices charged.  Within that cost, too, are useful data on how it is split between the hospital and the insurer(s) with which it has contracted.

Tax and Spent Progressive-Democrats

In spades.  They’re in a race to bankrupt us.  Or, as The Wall Street Journal put it,

The Democratic presidential primary is turning into a bidding war.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) has broken out of the starting gate with an offer of forgiveness of $640 billion in student debt for our votes.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I, VT), though, has caught her at the first turn: he’s offering $1.6 trillion (yes, that’s with a ‘t’) in canceled student debt plus tuition-free “public” colleges.

And both, and their fellow horse racers, are offering tens of trillions more dollars on their Green New Deal variants, health care for all variants, government jobs guarantee variants, social security for all variants, and on and on.

Free stuff for all, and all they want is our votes.  And the destruction of our economy and our wallets.

Federal Government and Home Lending

Investors worry about the impact on home mortgage costs from the Trump administration’s efforts to reform Federal involvement in the business—for instance, cutting Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae loose from Federal controls and support.

The WSJ‘s subheadline of the article at the link sums up those investors’ worry:

[A]ny overhaul to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could reduce or eliminate the federal backstop

To which this investor—and home-owner and mortgage payer—says, “Yeah, and?”

There should be no Federal backstop at all, there should be no Federal involvement in this, or any other, industry at all.  Federal involvement only distorts the market, and Federal money, being the increased demand of additional and protected money, only drives up costs.

Not an Iron Curtain

But it is intended to be a chain-link fence.  It’s not intended to keep folks out, though, but like its Big Brother, it is intended to “encourage” folks to stay in.

Connecticut has expanded its mansion tax on homes.  Here’s how it works.  On sale, Connecticut taxmen will exact from the seller a 2.25% tax on the value of the sale that exceeds $2.5 million.  This is an increase from the already existing “conveyance tax” of 1.25%, but it adds a fillip: if the seller stays in the State for a suitably long time after the sale (“suitable” being defined by the State’s politicians), he’ll get the money back as a tax credit.  If he leaves Connecticut for greener and friendlier pastures too soon to suit those politicians, too bad—he loses those 2.25%.

Governor Ned Lamont (D) made the nature of his chain-link fence explicit. He said that the tax is a

penalty when people whose homes are valued over $2.5 million sell their homes and leave the state.

There’s also a related question: with Connecticut making it so hard to leave, why would anyone want to go there in the first place?

It’s not all bad, though.  The center of Connecticut is only 35 miles from Massachusetts and only 55 miles from Rhode Island and New York.  To the extent there are jobs at all in Connecticut, those are easy commutes, as any Angelino, Metroplex resident, or New Jersey-ite knows.

Health Care for All

In Great Britain, Justice Nathalie Lieven of the Court of Protection (an ironically named court, as you’ll see in a bit) has ordered a woman’s pregnancy be terminated by abortion in the mother’s 22nd week.  The woman has the mental capacity of a grade schooler, and so Lieven has ordered the abortion ostensibly for the mother’s own sake.

Never mind that neither the woman nor the woman’s mother want the abortion, and the woman’s mother has said she would care for the baby—her granddaughter—as well as her daughter (for whom she already cares).  Lieven insisted

I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn’t want it is an immense intrusion[.]
I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society’s views of termination[.]

A judge operating on her personal view of “best interests” rather than written-down law or written Constitution definitions—and recall that our own Left considers our written Constitution not binding on anything—is a judge operating with far too narrow a view of justice, much less “interests.”

This judge, operating in her personal view of “best interests,” is carefully and cynically disregarding justice for, and the best interests of, the baby she’s ordered killed.

And this:

Doctors at the trust [NHS trust, a section of the Great Britain’s National Health Service] wished to abort her pregnancy and argued that, due to her diminished mental capacity, the abortion would be less traumatic for the woman than giving birth, especially if the baby would then be placed in foster care.

These are doctors who care not a penny for the trauma they want to inflict on the baby.  But, then, these are doctors operating under a Government program of taxpayer-funded health-care-for-all; these are doctors from whom Government has arrogated all moral responsibility; these are doctors therefrom wholly lacking personal moral concerns.

And this:

Lieven also said she did not believe the woman’s mother, who already helps care for her daughter, would be able to offer care for a grandchild at the same time.

Because no parent ever, much less a woman, has ever been able to take care of two children at the same time, even if one has a “mood disorder”—whatever that is in the British NHS lowest-bidder medical system.

No, this is the British judge’s decision: kill the baby before it’s born, lest it become an inconvenience to the health-care-for-all System.

This is taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand—judge’s as well as mother’s—that would be available under the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Government-run Medicare for All.

Update: Sometimes, justice strikes. Sadly, this only applies to the particular case, still, it is justice. Lieven’s shameful ruling was appealed by the mother, and it has been overturned. A British appellate court’s judges, Lord Justice McCombe, Lady Justice King, and Lord Justice Jackson, straight up reversed Lieven’s ruling; although they said they’d give their rationale only “at a later date.”

Prior to the reversal, Westminster auxiliary bishop John Sheridan had said [emphasis added]

Forcing a woman to have an abortion against her will, and that of her close family, infringes her human rights, not to mention the right of her unborn child to life in a family that has committed to caring for this child.

That last also emphasizes why this bit of justice is so narrow.  John McKendrick QC, representing the woman’s mother, told the appellate court that

Lieven’s analysis of what was in the woman’s best interests was flawed.

His argument wholly ignored that bit about the baby’s own interests, his inalienable right to life. As long as the baby’s welfare is routinely ignored in such debates, the whole question of abortion is badly skewed.